Hockey analyst Pierre McGuire speaks to a TV camera before game between the Canadiens and Chicago Blackhawks at the Bell Centre in Montreal on Jan. 8, 2008.john kenney / Montreal Gazette

"Somebody, I don't know who in New York, wrote something that was very inaccurate," McGuire tells Mitch Melnick on TSN 690 Radio.

Hockey analyst Pierre McGuire responded on Thursday afternoon to a report he has been demoted at NBC for its coverage of NHL games this season.

Rick Carpiniello, who covers the New York Rangers for The Athletic, reported on Twitter Wednesday that McGuire will be replaced as the between-the-benches analyst on NBC’s No. 1 broadcast team by former NHL goalie and current NBC analyst Brian Boucher, who will join play-by-play man Doc Emrick and analyst Eddie Olczyk. Carpiniello added that McGuire will still work other NHL games for NBC.

Per impeccable source, Pierre McGuire has been removed from NBC Sports' No. 1 hockey team, to be replaced by Brian Boucher.

NBC responded with a statement to John Ourand, a media reporter with the Sports Business Journal, saying: “Identical to last year, we will begin the season with Doc, Eddie, and Brian working the early Wednesday night hockey game, with Pierre anchoring the late game of the doubleheader.”

NBC Sports: "Identical to last year, we will begin the season with Doc, Eddie and Brian working the early Wednesday Night Hockey game, with Pierre anchoring the late game of the doubleheader." https://t.co/GwTQRH0SOf

“Somebody, I don’t know who in New York, wrote something that was very inaccurate,” McGuire told Melnick. “In fact, we all at NBC got our work schedules yesterday and today I got an elongated work schedule from NBC and also spoke with major-domo Sam Flood, who’s really been responsible for creating the NHL on NBC. He was just like: ‘I don’t know how all this started, I don’t know where it came from. I’m apologizing. This is what the schedule is. We went through this last year, you went to the West to help with the ratings,’ and we had gigantic numbers both in the East and the West last year and I enjoyed doing it. I really liked it because when you were doing my job for almost 16 years of staying in the East all the time — or virtually all the time — you saw the other teams on TV, but you didn’t spend time with those players very often unless they were on the East Coast swing. You never really got past Minnesota, so now I get a chance to see every player in the league and talk to them and it’s been great and I really appreciated it.

“I don’t know where it all starts, I know there’s some really mean-spirited people out there,” McGuire added. “But I can assure you that I have two years left on my contract — just like NBC does — and unless something happens to me I’m not going anywhere.”

McGuire noted that he covered a game in San Jose on opening night of the NHL season last year and that he will be in Las Vegas this year and also said he spent all of last season’s playoffs in the West except for the Washington-Carolina series and part of the Tampa-Columbus series.

When asked about the thinking that McGuire is being demoted with Boucher taking over as the No. 1 analyst at NBC, McGuire responded: “Brian’s going to be working with Eddie and Doc a fair bit, but I will be as well after Jan. 1, once football’s basically over. Brian’s going to get the same reps as he got last year. I’m out West with multiple partners and fewer three-man booths, more two-man shows.”

Hockey fans seem to either love or hate McGuire — with no in between — and Melnick asked him why so many people have a hard time dealing with him.

“I don’t know … I couldn’t tell you,” McGuire said. “They don’t know me, obviously, those people don’t know me. But I couldn’t tell you, I don’t know … I don’t know. … I’m not going to try to get into other people’s minds, but I think it’s important that if you’re going to do this job that you have strong opinions. If you can’t back them up, then you’re probably not going to last very long in the business. And I think it’s really important to have opinions that are informed, meaning that you’ve done a lot of handiwork and a lot of studying, whether it’s on tape or whether it’s with information or whether it’s through communication with different people so that you’re just not throwing stuff out there against the wall to see if it would stick. I’d like to think, Mitch — you and I have been doing this a long time — that more times than not, things that’s your opinion is more accurate than it’s not accurate.”

McGuire, 58, has been a fixture on Melnick’s weekday afternoon radio show at 5 p.m. since 2001.

McGuire was an assistant coach under Scotty Bowman with the Pittsburgh Penguins when they won the Stanley Cup in 1992 and spent one season as head coach of the Hartford Whalers in 1993-94, missing the playoffs before getting fired. He began his broadcasting career in 1997 as a radio colour commentator for Canadiens games before moving to TSN and then NBC. In 2013, McGuire won a Sports Emmy Award for Outstanding Sports Personality — Sports Reporter.

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